let your soul shine bright (like diamonds in the sky)
by The Crownless Queen
Summary: Yes, the course to True Love has never ran smooth, but sometimes you just know. A Stardust!AU, for NeonDomino.
**let your soul shine bright (like diamonds in the sky)**

Years later, their children will ask her how she knew she loved their father.

She'll smile and say she always did.

The truth is – the truth is she doesn't quite know. Their story's complicated after all (it's the stuff of legends, that's what it is, but what else could anyone expect from the rulers of a magical kingdom) and tracing the romance back to its beginning even more so.

Maybe it was this:

Hermione crashes to Earth because a cruel king thought it a good idea to send a magical necklace to the heavens and his sons on a wild goose chase after it to see which one of them deserved the throne, and Neville crashes into her because he thought of the star the girl he loved wanted instead of the mother he was supposed to visit.

 _(but no, that's not it, because Neville chained her hands with an unbreakable chain, dragged her toward his village so she could be paraded in front of the girl he loved – and wasn't that just great, how she had now been reduced from a celestial being to a thing to be exposed – and tied her to a tree so that she couldn't run away when she told him she needed rest)_

 _(or perhaps it was, because he wasn't unkind, and he did promise to give her a way home if she followed him)_

Or maybe it was this:

An evil witch with a knife, ready to cut out her heart and eat it (and damn it, she had _glowed_ for that bitch, she had been _happy_ there, why couldn't it have been true?), and green, cold fire around them, as Neville tried to protect her.

She'd remember the face he'd made when he had seen her there, in this tavern standing in the middle of nowhere, after a unicorn had dissolved the magical bonds holding her and helped her run away.

There had been more than relief or surprise there, there had been something else, something she couldn't quite name (she was no good at human emotions, even after the years she had spent watching them from above), but that something had echoed deep in her chest, making her breath catch for a moment and her heartbeat speed up oddly.

But as warm as his arms around her were, this Earth wasn't where she belonged (not yet anyway), and so when he said 'think of home' and lit the candle that would transport them far away from this place, she had thought of her home in the sky, instead of the village he had wanted her to.

 _(but that's not exactly right either, now is it? Because Neville was still thinking of his beloved childhood crush as the love of his life then, and she couldn't fathom a life anywhere but among her sisters, shining bright in the night sky)_

So no, it's not easy to capture the exact moment she could say she fell in love with him, but she does have a preferred tale, the one story she uses every time someone asks her how she knew.

After the tavern, and after the candle, they end up getting captured by sky pirates.

Captain McGonagall, of the Gryffindor, claims Neville as her nephew and Hermione as her gift to him on their journey home, and together they fool her crew into thinking nothing more of it.

But here's the part that matters most:

It's night and Hermione's sisters are shining above them, closer than they've been since she crashed down to this plane, and if she focuses just enough, she can almost see past the shine and hear their song again.

The Captain has been teaching Neville and Hermione how to dance, and if it's possible Neville is even worse at it than her, but…

But they try anyway, and there is a soft melody around them, and Neville has a hand on her waist and she feels like she's flying, like she's floating, all the pain and sorrows of the previous days washing away.

"You're shining," Neville whispers, his eyes open with something she can only call wonderment, and he slips back a lock of her hair behind her ear.

"That seems to be what stars do best, yes," Hermione replies teasingly with a soft smile, and when Neville smiles back she forgets to breathe.

She also forgets to count her steps and trips. Neville moves to catch her, and while he may be slightly more graceful than he was days ago, it's still not enough to stop them from crashing on the ship's wooden floor in a mess of limbs and laughter.

Tomorrow night, they'll try again and be better, but that night, oh that night, they just lay there, slowly catching their breaths, bodies close but not quite touching.

They miss the crew leaving, but the music stays, and so do they.

 _(and Hermione knows)_


End file.
